


The Boy on the Beach

by nat (MoastedRarshmallow)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e01 The Sixth Extinction, F/M, The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoastedRarshmallow/pseuds/nat
Summary: Fox Mulder is only human. Sometimes, he's as fragile as a child.





	The Boy on the Beach

**Author's Note:**

> i love these two episodes very much i just wish they had expanded on the boy on the beach part of mulder's psyche. heres that basically it was really fun to write
> 
> kudos keep me going, comments make me better! <3

Mulder, comatose. The white hospital walls turn dark in his mind, with just a spotlight to illuminate his fragile body. Mulder strains against the light, he doesn’t want to be seen like this. There is a puff of smoke, and the sweet, cheap smell of Morley cigarettes.

 The electrodes attached to Mulder’s head seem to become pulsing snakes as he shudders, suddenly freezing. His hospital gown shakes, as do the sheets a nurse has pulled up to his neck. A seizure. No lights go off, no warning signal is sent to the nurses’ station. No code warning.

 The Cigarette Smoking Man pulls the needle from Mulder’s temple.

 “Time to wake up, Agent Mulder,” he hisses.

 

 A little boy sits in the hot sand. In front of him is a bucket, and occasionally he fills it and flips it over to make a sandcastle. Mulder finds himself sitting on a rocky incline nearby, watching the boy play. Occasionally, the boy will giggle and knock over his castle, only to start again.

 Smash, giggle, build. Smash, giggle, build.

 The boy’s father materializes, and together, they build the sandcastle large enough to not easily be smashed by the child.

 

 Mulder bolts upright in the hospital bed.

 The Cigarette Man is gone, but the smell of tobacco lingers. Scully is folded up in a hospital chair nearby. The gentle rise and fall of her chest is comforting, but he’s disoriented by her presence. Wasn’t the Cigarette Man just here? What was his timeframe?

 Her keen ears hear him rustling the sheets, and her eyes open. Warm blue oceans. Mulder’s always loved her eyes.

 “Hi,” she whispers. Her red hair is wild from sleep.

 “Hi.”

 “You took quite a bump to the head.”

 “Did I? I can’t remember.”

 Scully frowns at his ill-timed joke. “Go back to sleep, Mulder,” she says. He closes his eyes.

 

 The Cigarette Smoking Man holds a lighter, a Bic, but he doesn’t flick it. He’s polished off a whole carton already. It’d be breaking the bank if he was someone of lesser importance.

 This thing, this unpleasantness with Fox Mulder was really spiking his nerves, even if he couldn’t show it. One of the doctors was reading him a report on the Agent’s condition as he played with the lighter, but he was barely listening.

 “Let’s get it over with,” he says, coolly. “Continue as planned.”

 He finally flicks the lighter over a Morley, letting a puff go into the high ceiling of the secret facility.

 “Sir,” the doctor says. “You can’t smoke in here.”

 A rookie.

The Cigarette Man only smiles.

 

 The boy on the beach is older now, old enough to want to make something substantial in the sand. He makes a rude gesture as Mulder approaches, he wants to be left alone.

 “Hey, buddy,” Mulder says. The boy doesn’t look up.

“Don’t you want some help with that?”

 The boy shakes his head. He builds the sandcastle higher and higher until it collapses under its own weight. The boy howls like he’s been slapped. He turns to Mulder.

 “Look what you did!”

 

 “Ma’am, Mr. Mulder’s mother signed him out this morning. To say he’s missing would be an overreaction,” said the squat, kindly nurse.

 Scully gritted her teeth. “Do your camera records reflect that fact?”

 The squat nurse frowned. “Sorry, honey. All the cameras had a power surge the night Mr. Mulder was discharged. We do have her signature, though…”

  Scully smiled politely at the nurse, but she was fuming. Anyone could forge a signature…

 

 “Sir, we can’t just… forget about Agent Mulder! He’s a huge asset to this organization, he’s my partner –“

 Assistant Director Skinner stops walking and turns around. He has great brown eyes, cow eyes, and they look incredibly tired.

 “No one is forgetting about Agent Mulder, here, believe me when I say that. I feel the same way about him as you do.”

 Scully wants to stamp her foot like a child. “So _why_ has the search been called off?”

 Skinner raises an eyebrow. “No one asked for my authorization to end the search…”

 “How is that possible?” Scully asks. Her heart jumps into her throat. If the Assistant Director of the FBI was left in the dark, how could an agent like herself possibly find and retrieve Mulder?

 The AD shakes his head. "I'll look into it."

 

 The government facility is cold, inside and out. It seems it should be desolate, but it’s teeming with doctors, nurses, officials, and, most unfortunately; patients. Aliens, humans, alien-human hybrids. Test subjects stripped down to little more than their genetic integrity.

 It’s sick. Mulder would have hurled, had he been conscious.

 

 The boy on the beach runs up to a little girl, who’s building her own castle. They embrace. The little boy and the little girl begin to build a trench to protect themselves from the incoming tide. Inside, they build the grandest sandcastle Mulder has ever seen.

 The little girl is carried off, suddenly, by unseen hands. The trench is flooded with water. The sandcastle topples.

The little boy howls, and Mulder howls with him.

  _Samantha._

 

 “Do you think he dreams?” Diana Fowley says, hovering over the unconscious Mulder. There are tubes and wires coming in and out of his body. Steel rods wrap around his head, reminiscent of a halo.

 “Sure, he dreams,” the Cancer Man replies. His cigarette smolders.

 “Of what?”

 The Cigarette Man takes a puff. “The most complex men have the simplest dreams.”

 Diana nods. “Creature comforts?”

 “Something like that.”

 

 The boy on the beach is gone, now. The sky is gray, and the ocean threatens to swallow Mulder whole with its currents. A crack of thunder. Smoke.

 

 Mulder thrashes. On the operating table, in the government facility, his body thrashes too.

 “That’s… supposed to be impossible,” whispers a doctor. She doesn’t want to upset the Cigarette Man, who watches them close by. He’s supposed to have this man’s brain implanted into him, but she is wary about the safety of the whole thing.

 What does she know? She’s just the doctor. She’s not supposed to ask questions.   

 

 “Agent Scully!”

 Scully rounds the corridor. It’s long, dark, and she’s scared. She’s not usually this afraid, and if she is, she’s usually able to contain it. Fear ripples through her gut, now, she can feel its vibration on the sleek metal of her gun.

 “Agent Scully!”

 Skinner’s voice. She doesn’t listen.

  _Where’s Mulder?_

The boy on the beach is crying, but it can’t be heard over the roaring waves. Mulder cries with him.

 

 Scully breaks down one door after another. She can feel fellow FBI agents on her tail, and loyalists to whatever organization this building belongs to are closing in. She must move fast.

 

 Mulder flops like a fish. His cries, all the way from the beach, echo out into the corridor.

 

  _MULDER!_

 

 She breaks into a sprint. She kicks everything in her path.

 

 “Stop! FBI!” someone cries. There are people evacuating the building. She hopes they’re not yelling at her, because she has no plans to slow down.

 

 Mulder. On a glass table. Unconscious. Tubes, wires, holes in his head. He reminds her of the Messiah, what the Cancerman hoped he could be.

Scully drops down beside him. She strokes his cheek. She can feel hot dots of tears form in her eyes.

 “Mulder…”

 

 The sun comes out on the beach. The boy giggles.


End file.
